English language translation theory department

Her Leisurely Manner of Writing
Jane Austen spent something like twenty-seven years on her six novels, writing them with care, constantly revising and then allowing a full twelve months for each final re-writing before publication. Her leisurely method of writing may be contrasted with the haste of Sir Walter Scott, who at times produced four novels in one year. It is not surprising therefore that the final versions of her novels have a formal perfection—no loose ends, no padding, no characterization for its own sake, and a flawlessly consistent idiom suited to the person who used it. Nothing is allowed in a Jane Austen novel that is not there for a clearly defined reason, to contribute to the plot, the drama of feelings, the moral structure, or the necessary psychology.
The Novels in the Order of Publication
1. Sense and Sensibility (1811)
2. Pride and Prejudice (1813)
3. Mansfield Park (1814)
4. Emma (1815)
5. Northanger Abbey (1817)
6. Persuasion (1817)

1.2 The history of writing the novel. “Persuasion”
Persuasion is Jane Austen's last completed novel. She began it soon after she had finished Emma, completing it in August 1816. She died, aged 41, in 1817; Persuasion was published in December that year (but dated 1818). Persuasion is linked to Northanger Abbey not only by the fact that the two books were originally bound up in one volume and published together, but also because both stories are set partly in Bath, a fashionable city with which Austen was well acquainted, having lived there from 1801 to 1805. Besides the theme of persuasion, the novel evokes other topics, such as the Royal Navy, in which two of Jane Austen's brothers ultimately rose to the rank of admiral. As in Northanger Abbey, the superficial social life of Bath-well known to Austen, who spent several relatively unhappy and unproductive years there-is portrayed extensively and serves as a setting for the second half of the book. In many respects Persuasion marks a break with Austen's previous works, both in the more biting, even irritable satire directed at some of the novel's characters and in the regretful, resigned outlook of its otherwise admirable heroine, Anne Elliot, in the first part of the story. Against this is set the energy and appeal of the Royal Navy, which symbolises for Anne and the reader the possibility of a more outgoing, engaged, and fulfilling life, and it is this worldview which triumphs for th³e most part at the end of the novel.
Jane Austen was about forty years old when she wrote Persuasion. Until then, she had always taken as her heroine a young woman at the threshold of life, inexperienced, falling in love for the first time, aged somewhere between seventeen and twenty-one. Now she told a different kind of story. Anne Elliot is twenty-seven, with a fully mature mind. For her, falling in love is something that belongs to her past. Eight years before the novel opens, she had become engaged to marry Captain Wentworth of the Royal Navy, but was persuaded to break off the engagement for reasons of prudence. She has spent the last eight years regretting the decision, and does not expect to find love again.
The novel has two settings. From Michaelmas to Christmas Anne resides in the Somerset count⁴ryside, first at the home of her married sister, then with her friend Lady Russell. Two days are spent by the sea at Lyme, where events occur that will change the destiny of several of the characters. After Christmas Anne goes reluctantly to live in Bath. Her spend-thrift, snobbish father, Sir Walter Elliot, has taken a house here in order to economise, while his country estate is let to Captain Wentworth’s sister and her husband, Admiral Croft. Anne experiences Bath as a place of confinement, artificiality and uselessness. She is rescued from it by Captain Wentworth’s gradual realisation that he is still in love with her, as she has never ceased to be in love with him.
Persuasion is one of the most tender love stories ever written, and Anne’s gentle, patient but firm character makes her a fitting heroine for Jane Austen’s most mature novel. ‘Almost too good for me’, Jane Austen called her. Could she be modelled on Cassandra, whose reserved nature she seems to share, and whose heart seems to have remained similarly faithful to her lost love? If so, she is Jane’s tribute to the sister she had admired all her life, and perhaps her attempt to make that sister’s modestly concealed virtues understood by the world.